Some Important Challenges for the Creationist Movement

[001] Creationists have the image of being obscurantists who avoid most of the data of scientific research. ... In the 1970's the situation was considerably different. At that time many public educators were honestly trying to listen to creationists and to figure out a way by which they could cooperate with them... Then at the Arkansas trial the whole picture was changed. In that trial, creationists went on record as refusing to recognize large bodies of carefully collected geologic and astronomic data -- in addition to the (very proper) rejection of the many alleged evidences for macroevolution and abiogenesis.

During the trial there was a rather prominent emphasis on the young-earth beliefs of the creationists, since the teaching of a very young earth was a part of the written law which was being challenged. [The author calls this view "Creationism."]

[004 - regarding index fossils, quoting Schafersman, 1983] "Index fossils do help determine the age of a given rock formation, but only by correlation from a type section of rock that is first defined to be a certain age. Fossils, by themselves, do not determine an age, so no attribute of theirs, including evolution, is necessary to date a rock. Creationists believe that geologists use a fossil's supposed 'stage of evolution' to determine age, but nothing could be further from the truth."

[006] The leading young-earth creationists, e.g. Morris and Whitcomb, have repeatedly insisted that they do not invoke special miraculous action of God to accomplish the deposition of sediments during the Flood. Yet they and dozens of other creationist authors continue to describe the effects of the Flood and its supposed formation of the main parts of the earth's sedimentary cover, in ways which demand either many special miracles or the complete altering of a large number of physical laws....

[011] Christians don't need to be afraid of the scientific method of research. We approach scientific research with some basic presuppositions, e.g., that matter was created by God, and that the world around us is rationally organized and understandable to man, whose mind is designed "in the image of" the Creator. Then we go to work searching for answers from God's natural revelation. ... The Bible is never really in opposition to the characteristics of the natural world around us, for God does not contradict himself.

[013 -- fallacious ideas of young-earth creationists]

(1) great thicknesses of soft sediments could be pushed up and folded at steep inclinations without amalgamating the layers, and without crushing the shells of delicate, thin-shelled animals to be fossilized.

(2) most kinds of sediments were able to become quickly lithified after deposition.

-- most types of sediments require at least hundreds of years for appreciable lithification, even under favorable circumstances.